


All the Jagged Edges

by Doctorinblue



Series: Before and After [1]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Food Issues, M/M, Rejection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 14:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doctorinblue/pseuds/Doctorinblue
Summary: After a pass at Trapper Hawkeye is hurt and determined it won't happen again.





	All the Jagged Edges

Hawkeye is drunk. Again. And while he's often found himself in this position since landing in Korea, he's rarely felt this ache. It's deep in his gut, burning like fire across his skin and he can't stop counting the minutes Trapper has been wearing his best smile and laughing like they're in Times Square instead of their little tent in a war-torn country. For four and a half hours Hawkeye has been treading the line, longing to reach out and take more. Beg, even, just to feel alive for a moment...to feel anything but budding apathy and ulcer.

He takes another drink. 

The seconds grow hazy but the feeling remains. He tries, once again, to read the words on the page (might as well know his destruction) but Trapper tucks it to his chest and lets Hawkeye lean into him uselessly. Hawkeye's stomach aches - like it's been flipped inside out and left in the dirt. He knows the truth and this dance all too well. Probably, he'll never meet Trapper's family, and just as likely he'll never see him in his home town, but he can feel their tug on Trapper all the same. From halfway across the world they've lit him up like a summer bonfire and Hawkeye is jealous and sad and incapable of recreation despite proximity.

Even completely sloshed he knows that their goodbye will be goodbye, but the homemade gin is enough to soothe his muscles and mind and the edges of his worry are frayed and he's just so damn tired he wants to forget right and wrong. Or, at the very least, pretend he can.

He leans in again, close enough to feel the breath from Trapper's sudden exhale. He looks from his mouth to his eyes and isn't surprised that Trapper is leaning away. He catches himself, freezes, and Trapper still recoils. Trapper topples half off the cot and Hawkeye nearly laughs it away. Trapper does, actually. He pulls himself to his feet and gives Hawkeye a half push and settles himself again.

"Don't be stupid, Hawk," he says. "You're drunk."

And who is Hawkeye to argue, despite the ache that has doubled inside, despite the tears he won't dare let fall? Stupid. It echoes in his head, rattles a few more pieces of hope loose, but maybe Trapper is right. No. Trapper is right. Trap is a married man, and despite all the jokes Hawkeye has never had a reason to believe they were anything more solid than humor. They've never crossed that line, and they'd shared a bed more than once. Stupid. So stupid.

So, he laughs too. It dies on his lips and he finishes his drink and listens to Trapper ramble on about his wife or his kids - he can't say for sure after another glassful. They finish the night in a state of semi-normal. Trapper jokes and Hawkeye is dying inside and it's not so different from before anyway.

He pats Trapper on the shoulder and puts his empty glass on the table. Or attempts to...it hits the ground and Hawkeye just manages to step over it and throw himself into his bed. Tomorrow, things would be fine, he knows. Because Trapper is his friend and because he'd convince himself that Hawkeye was too drunk, or teasing him and when the next choppers came no one would notice the change. 

MASH

They don't touch for a week and then it's suddenly as if Trapper forgets entirely. Hawkeye never will. That moment, those words, are a wound that will surely scar, a place for Hawkeye's mind to run over and over until he knows each jagged edge with clarity. 

Hawkeye sits at the long table with a cold cup of pretend coffee and pretends he has the energy to drink it. Trapper slides down in front of him with a tray of food and an extra plate. He takes it off and slides it in Hawkeye's direction. 

"Eat, Hawk," he says, poking his spoon in and out what appears to be a porridge of some sort. 

Maybe. 

Hawkeye looks down at it, the bread, sure to be a surplus from the revolutionary war. Despite the obvious, he just truly has lost his appetite. It seems the more things go back to normal, the less normal he is capable of feeling.

"Please." Trapper says and it's so damn soft for a man that...well, for Trapper. "Hawk....just eat."

So he does. He takes a bite and it tastes like nothing and he swallows it down. It doesn't feel like nothing in his stomach though, seems to be stuck behind his ribs and he takes another bite under the watchful eye of Trapper. And Hawkeye knows they'll be okay because there isn't a choice. Because Trapper might not come in the right package, but he's what Hawkeye needs to survive. So he holds on. And he finishes the bread, the cold cup of coffee and as they leave the tent Trappers hand claps over his shoulder and squeezes and Hawkeye vows to keep himself to himself for the rest of the war.


End file.
